Holidays, Witness wives, and authorities in the community WT 2001 QFR

garybuss

I must have missed this, In the Dec 15 2001 Watchtower magazine Question From Readers page 28-29 the Society says ". . . the individual Christian has to decide what noncompromising things can be done at the request of one having authority in the family or in the community."
"things can be done at the request of one having authority . . . in the community."
What the heck's this mean? You mean the mailman can request a Witness to send Christmas cards and she could comply?
Or is this just talking about food sin?

fullofdoubtnow

It kind of says it's ok to cook a meal for an unbelieving husband. It doesn't say whether she can have any or not, so what does she do - go hungry? And she wouldn't attach any holiday significance to it, like saying this christmas pudding isn't christmas pudding, it's just pudding people eat at christmas.

The one about shopping for her husbamd as well - it's saying that she could buy him his christmas presents as long as she pretended they aren't christmas presents.

If I'd been the jw wife with an unbelieving husband, I'd be more baffled after reading this than before it.

peacefulpete

lol, she could also by the Christmas tree as long as she does not "judge what he intends to do with it" after she gives it to him. very funny

garybuss

I "got" it all, except . . . "things can be done at the request of one having authority . . . in the community."
They didn't give an example of complying with a request made by a person having authority in the [wordly] community pertaining to holidays.
Also, they didn't give a proof text to show eating [or preparing] food is a sin.

garybuss

Witnesses have a food sin fetish.
That's the problem with blood medical treatment. They don't have a problem with medical treatment, they have a problem with a food item being transfused. They say transfusing blood is an intravenous feeding. Blood treatment is food sin, cranberries at Thanksgiving is food sin.

Mistah MOJO

Le bon dieu this is load of pharisaic twaddle. Religious peeps will never amaze to cease me with their blindness. I'd rather be dead.

Scully

It's kind of funny how the whole article revolves around the husband's headship/authority, and how normally it would not be an issue to prepare a meal that he requested, or purchase items that he requested, or visiting with relatives, and that there is nothing wrong in and of themselves to do those things as part of the wife's role. By the end of the article though, don't you just love how it makes it ok for other people to judge The Christian Wife's™ activity?

"Of course, a Christian wife should think of others - the effect on them. (Philippians 2:4) She would like to avoid giving the impression that she is linked to the holiday."

Yep, it's all about appearances, folks. She can do all those things, as long as she doesn't appear to be enjoying herself too much. Kind of like Rendering The Wifely Due™.

Merry Magdalene

"things can be done at the request of one having authority . . . in the community."

Maybe it means...at work or something?...if your boss tells you to decorate the office or arrange an office party or ?

"authority...in the community" is an odd way to phrase it, though

~Merry

garybuss

This is another one of those articles I read four times and I still don't know what it means. Is the Watchtower magazine being written like the Pay Attention book now . . . with an abstract idea printed and the Witness having to write in the particulars in the margins?
What noncompromising things can be done to satisfy a request of a person in the community with authority?
I have to remember this is written by the company that saw applying to the United Nations as a noncompromising act.
Do they have people hired to think up ways to just fill space in the publications without actually saying anything? Seems like it to me.

Holidays, Witness wives, and authorities in the community WT 2001 QFR

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